/ DESTINATION GUIDE: Harthill Quarry

Every area has their 'big three': Yorkshire has Malham, Kilnsey and Gordale; the South West has Sennen, Bosigran, and Chair Ladder; and finally North Wales has…well…North Wales just has hundreds of good crags. Here in the Peak we have a similar sort of three greats, which have come to be known as the Triple H: Horseshoe, Harpur Hill, and finally - the dark horse of the trio - Harthill Quarry.

I really wish you hadn't written this, because now I'm going to have to visit the place now when I could be doing something more enjoyable, like stabbing myself in the feet with rusty forks. I quite like the idea of bolted lower offs...why not?

Some of the locals aren't the friendliest, we were threatened with some very sharp looking farming tools walking back through the quarry from the clifftop boulder. We were told climbing wasn't allowed there and to leave straight away or else, never had any issues before and didn't put us off going back but I've never met someone that aggressive at a crag before.

I did Grip, HVS 5a* for my crag tick. Trying to remember who with,... might well have been Fiend. The climb was really good crack climbing once you could access it but getting over the top layer of choss was horrendous. As belayer, I ran round and dropped a top rope for it The picture makes the base look like an Idyll compared to reality (brambled bouldery nastiness).... pic must be left of the main crag. Clifftop Boulders next door are real quality. If you want proper adventure we can sneak in and climb something at the amazing looking Knabb quarry (still need my tick there), p.315.

Thanks, I never said that access was through the quarry. I said we were walking through the quarry after going to the clifftop boulder. As the article was about the quarry I thought people may want to be aware of the possibility of being threatened with violence if they went there.

I got that. I was trying to be clear that the quarry is best avoided completely when going to and from Clifftop as those who use it have got annoyed with climbers in the past (as per our information on p.374 in the Froggatt guide) hence the defined access route that doesn't go through the quarry.